Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Hi Guys. I’m new, I’m happy to be here. I have a question, and it is really important for me to decide very soon.

I’m a violinist, classical violinist of course and I need a good recorder for:

Record myself while practising
Record my concerts*
Record other concerts (friends, colleagues and so on)*
Make high-quality recordings to be sent for selections, competitions, and other stuff.
* this also sometimes outdoor

As you can imagine, the environmental condition can vary so much... from a very little practising room, to very bigh halls, either with very very dry or very reverbering sound. I was looking for a very flexible instrument, and a flash device like the Zoom or the Edirol or the Microtrack is the best. By reading some review, I would be for the Zoom H4 (i dunno the H2, how is it?) but here

http://www.proaudioreview.com/pages/s.0035/t.514.html

is a review that talks about a 700hz tone, disturbing every recording. It seems that in Zoom’s opinion it’s because the recording is made with the Zoom battery-powered insted of with the power supply. Here

http://www.transom.org/tools/recording_ ... 3_zoom_h4/

are some samples that are really ruined by this noise. Here

http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16949/messages/59335.htm

somebody complains about a noise (maybe also not the same as above) that is compromising every recordings at every quality, and that at the highest resolution in WAV is even audible the blinking of the LEDs...

Of course it is totally useless for me to have a recorder with such a defect, can you tell me something about? I don’t read anything herre about this problem, so it suggest to me that it’s just question to not find bad units, or maybe an early production series had this noise, or that they solved with some firmware upgrade... What should i do? Thank you, guys

Serjiolin

Actually, it's been discussed in many posts. Search for 'beep'. See threads like:

http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=8000
http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=7886

The beep can be made to essentially vanish into the noise by careful application of the above mods.

However, without making any mods, the beep will not be in recordings made while using an external power pack of ~5-6v or greater or the supplied AC adapter. For one of many ways to make a cheap external power pack, see:

http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=7838

[Needing an external power supply might seem contrary to the very reason you might want a handy portable one-piece recorder -- on the other hand, unless you put a fresh set of batteries in the unit every recording session, do you really want to run out half-way through? A freshly charged set of external packs or AC adapter avoids that worry.]

I'm a classical singer and I can say the unit is perfect for doing all that. I'm a big fan of digital recording/editing so you can trust in the H4 if you want a good quality recorder.

Now, If you're lookong for a professional quality sound.... and you can afford US$1000-2000, then the Zoom is not your recorder.

You can listen some examples here, were I posted some examples od diverse use of the recorder.

http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic. ... highlight=

The first 2 recordings were using batteries and the last one (fauré), with the AC adaptor.

I recorded my son's 7th-8th grade chorale from 4th row center in a world-class symphony hall last weekend. Their chorale consists of 14 boys, and the songs were either accompanied by piano or were unaccompanied.

The recording was done using the built-in mics at high sensitivity and on the internal batteries.

In that setting, the beep can be heard very softly in the dead time of the a capella pieces, especially after I normalized those to bring up the volume to a good listening level throughout all songs. So, yes, the beep can be a slight nuisance when recording source material that is quiet throughout a piece.

If you are a string player and do want to do the very best recording of a quiet piece from a distance, you will want to plug in the unit or use an external battery. If you would like to hear a short clip from that recording, just PM me with your email address and I'll send it.

A couple of other notes:

1. Bought a 2 gig Sandisk SD card, so I'm finally able to record at the higher wave settings. That made a nice difference on recording a massed handbell concert last weekend. That recording, from the bleachers in a gymnasium, turned out fantastic. BestBuy had them for $29.99 this week, no mail in rebate required.

2. Using the H4 in its normal internal battery/internal mike config seems to me to be less 'threatening?' than if you add an external power pack, microphones, etc. In its normal config, it's about as intrusive as someone videotaping their kids during a show. Start adding bulk and cables, and it begins to look like you're going for a professional recording of the material, and that might raise more eyebrows and the venue might ask you to stop. Of course, if does a near-professional job in its stock form....but they don't need to know that.

Brian

I'm a classical flutist, have made many recordings with my H4 - solo, with strings & piano, with entire orchestra. I have gotten very good sound quality.

The infamous "beep" is only faintly audible at the highest gain setting and it only occurs when running on AA batteries. So if you don't want the beep, just use external 9V power. Or, modify your H4 like I did as described in this forum. Even with the "beep" the H4 has very good sound quality, better than the the Edirol and comparable to the Microtrack.

Great, it's time to repost.... because I bought yesterday my first recorder, my first ZOOM!!! Oh, yeah.

Don't say all the good things, it would be too long. Just a pair, but first what's bad...

Let's say that yesterday I recorded a practise session in MP3 on a Sandisk Ultra II 256MB and it didn't work the STE-001.mp3 around the middle was corrupted, and also the other 4 tracks I did after. While playing this file, suddenly the signal fault to 0, like sombody has unplugged the mics during the recording (but it was with the internal mics of course). The H4 was unable to play his own tracks made after the 001, and when I put the memory card in the pc or in my pda everything freezed. So I deleted the files. The SD has been formatted by the zoom. During the recording I didn't notice anything strange, also because I did the level scanning before every recording. So this is strange, today I will try again with the SD provided with the H4, hope in better results.

I didn't found the beep. I will look better

I like that I can use as metronome, I don't have a real one, only on the PC and on the PDA... that is enough in any case. And i like the interface, it's so friendly for me... i read some reviews where the people complained about the menu button, and that the interface is counterintuitive... i find it's actually the opposite, maybe becouse i'm used with PDAs... i'm not able at all to handle a Minidisc for instance. The H4 is great.

OK people! Now i wait for the official "welcome in the club!" Where are the confetti, and the candles?


PS Thanks so much for all the replyies, it's so interesting the modding!!!

Sounds like an SD card problem. I had similar problems when I first got mine. Zoom has a list of recommended SD cards; when I swapped mine for one from this list, all problems disappeared:
http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4/SDlist.html
Also make sure you have the latest (version 1.3) firmware if you're using MP3 mode. Earlier versions had encoding problems.